Nasa filmed the shadow of a solar eclipse from space

Nasa has captured the complete passage of the Moon's shadow across the Earth during a solar eclipse visible from the Western Pacific region on 9 March.

The sequence was captured by the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DISCOVR) using the Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC), and its four megapixel CCD and Cassegrain telescope. The images show the Moon's shadow moving in the same direction as the Earth's rotation, crossing the Indian Ocean, passing Indonesia and Australia and heading past Micronesia towards the open waters of the Pacific Ocean.

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Gallery: Nasa filmed the shadow of a solar eclipse from space

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Adam Szabo, Nasa's project scientist for DSCOVR said that “What is unique for us is that being near the Sun-Earth line, we follow the complete passage of the lunar shadow from one edge of the Earth to the other. A geosynchronous satellite would have to be lucky to have the middle of an eclipse at noon local time for it. I am not aware of anybody ever capturing the full eclipse in one set of images or video."

While the EPIC usually only captures full resolution images once every 108 minutes, using 10 spectral filters, for the eclipse, the team configured it to use only the red, green and blue channels requires for full colour imaging and collected full resolution images every 20 minutes, allowing a complete set of 13 images to be created of the eclipse's four hour and 20 minute passage.

This was 2016's only total solar eclipse: the next is due on 21 August 2017 and, unlike this year's, will be visible from Europe.